During the 18th Century there were various Volunteer Associations and unofficial militia units controlled by the landowners, concerned mainly with internal security.
While most of the Regular Army was fighting overseas, the coasts of England and Wales were defended by the embodied Militia, but Ireland had no equivalent force.
The new Act was based on existing English precedents, with the men conscripted by ballot to fill county quotas (paid substitutes were permitted) and the officers having to meet certain property qualifications.
Viscount Conyngham, who had been nominated to raise and command the regiment, gathered a force of volunteers and the opposition died away.
[5][6][7][8][9] The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars saw the British and Irish militia embodied for a whole generation, becoming regiments of full-time professional soldiers (though restricted to service in Britain or Ireland respectively), which the regular army increasingly saw as a prime source of recruits.
They served in coast defences, manned garrisons, guarded prisoners of war, and carried out internal security duties.
[10] In Ireland the latter role assumed greater importance, with frequent armed clashes between militia detachments and the self-styled 'Defenders' in the 1790s.
A large French expeditionary force appeared in Bantry Bay on 21 December and troops from all over Ireland were marched towards the threatened area.
When the militiamen of 1793 reached the end of their four-year enlistment in 1797, most of the Irish regiments were able to maintain their numbers through re-enlistments (for a bounty).
[4][14][15] Conygham appears to have given up the command of the Clare Militia in 1797, because his twin brother the Hon Francis Nathaniel Burton was appointed colonel on 27 October.
[20] By the end of 1801 peace negotiations with the French were progressing and recruiting and re-enlistment for the Irish Militia was stopped in October.
Over the following years the regiments carried out garrison duties at various towns across Ireland, attended summer training camps.They also provided volunteers to transfer to the Regular Army.
The Clare, Louth and Mayo militia regiments boarded transport ships but were unable to leave Dublin Bay for some time because of contrary wind, and then the convoy was driven by a storm into Milford Haven with some damage.
Over the following months the Clare Militia were successively stationed at Ipswich, Woodbridge, Harwich, Horsham, Brighton, Chichester, Haslar and Gosport.
[26] Napoleon escaped from Elba in 1815 and the Irish Militia were called out again on 26 June as the bulk of the regular army crossed to the Continent for the short Waterloo campaign and occupation duties in its aftermath.
[25] At the time he was a half-pay captain, having served in several cavalry regiments, and was the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.)
The Militia Reserve introduced in 1867 consisted of present and former militiamen who undertook to serve overseas in case of war.
For the Clare Militia this was in Sub-District No 70 (Counties of Kerry, Cork and Clare) in Cork District of Irish Command:[40] Although often referred to as brigades, the sub-districts were purely administrative organisations, but in a continuation of the Cardwell Reforms a mobilisation scheme began to appear in the Army List from December 1875.
There were moves to reform all the Auxiliary Forces (Militia, Yeomanry and Volunteers) to take their place in the six Army corps proposed by St John Brodrick as Secretary of State for War.
[44][45] Under the more sweeping Haldane Reforms of 1908, the Militia was replaced by the Special Reserve, a semi-professional force whose role was to provide reinforcement drafts for Regular units serving overseas in wartime.
The officers wore the standard South Irish Division helmet plate and embroidered pouch, each with 'CLARE ARTILLERY' on the lower scroll.
[6][51] On the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War the English counties had drawn lots to determine the relative precedence of their militia regiments.